Harry Green Left Vilna, Russia, at Age Sixteen to Escape the Army

Mohawks when the French and British explorers came. Until a hundred years ago Aroostook was a frontier region. During the American Revolution loyal British escaped to Nova Scotia and Houlton. Now one-third of the residents are descendants of Loyalists and live in peace with Swedes, French, English, Irish, and Scots. Harry Green left Vilna, Russia, at age sixteen to escape the army. His father, a lumberman, sent him to a friend in Philadelphia, but Harry did not like city life. He managed to reach Houlton in 1895; there he photographed and framed pictures. In a few months he learned English and traveled with a horse and wagon. He brought his parents and six brothers and two sisters. In a few years the family opened stores throughout Aroostook Harry Green County as well as south in Waterville and Augusta. When I met Alfred Green (Harry's son) in Houlton, he was retired. He told me he was a "wild one" when he was a young man. It was his non-Jewish wife who changed him. He began to work in Aroostook was not always peaceful. Both the Unites States and the store from 6 A.M. to midnight on Saturdays and from 6 A.M. to Great Britain claimed an immense tract of land north of a line 9 P.M. several nights a week. His father would go to the lumber running from Mars Hill to the western boundary of Maine. While camps in winter and measure the lumberjacks for suits that the controversy was being settled, lumbermen from New would be sewn in Maiden, Boston, or New York. Brunswick were cutting valuable timber and floating it down river In the spring the men came to the store for their suits. After to St. John. During the winter of 1838-39, Maine sent a posse to the long, hard winter, thousands of men came to town to get Aroostook to stop this. New Brunswick Governor Harvey then drunk and have fun. Once a year the restaurant would pay a fine declared his province had been invaded by a foreign foe and for liquor smuggled from Canada, but "one hand washed the posted troops along the eastern border. Maine sent militia, but a other." truce was declared, and the whole fracas was settled by the By 1900 all the peddling and saving led to the opening of a Webster Ashburton Treaty of 1842. store in Houlton. Profits were invested in real estate in Presque By 1860 there were 22,000 people in Aroostook County. Isle and throughout Aroostook County. All went well until the Traffic over Military Road was heavy in winter when the well- depression of 1921 when Alfred's father and uncle lost $65,000. packed snow made great roads—used less when they piled high They split up and left Aroostook to start over again. Alfred's with snow drifts after a storm. In summer, when the low places family remained. Peddlers sometimes spent harsh snow storms were "sloughs of despond," laden wagons sank to their axles in with the Greens. They told stories about fishing between farms in mud. The four-and six-horse teams often went in caravans to help the spring and summer. Alfred got a "bang out of them." each other. Twenty miles was a good day's journey. The faster Now the grandchildren of this large family are professionals four-horse teams made the trip with mail and passengers from and breeders of trotters. At the reunion ten years ago, eighty Bangor to Presque Isle in three days. people came, but now they are not close. Alfred's daughter, a flight Aroostook County is not considered "down east" for it is attendant, came back to take care of her mother. Alfred is no inland and somewhat separated from the rest of Maine. Here the longer a "wild one," he said. Mic Mac Indians practiced agriculture. The soil yielded buckwheat, not common wheat or corn. The enemies were Iroquois and 156 157.

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